The Long Slow Burn
by girloficeandfire
Summary: AU that deviates from canon while Sansa is on the Merlin King, having fled from King's Landing after the Purple Wedding.


**DISCLAIMER: Characters and dialogue excerpts are GRRM's and his alone. Personally I'm far too much like Sandor (minus the whole kinslaying desires, threats of beating and alcoholism and constantly killing people thing…heh…) and love imagining what he was thinking during his many conversations with Sansa Stark.**

_SanXsan LJ community commentfic meme prompt: Sansa flees Kings landing the same way but the ship sinks and she washes up on the QI._

**SANSA**

They'd been a month at sea, and what a terrible month it had been. At first she had been sick with memories of Joffrey dying, choking, poisoned to death; of Ser Dontos her Florian riddled with crossbow bolts...and always, always of a room filled with the green and orange light of wildfire and regular flames, of a scarred and bloodied man looming over her and stealing a song and a kiss...

Just as the dreams, the visions, the memories had begun to let up, the storms began. The Merlin King was tossed about on the waves like a toy and sometimes the only thing that kept Sansa Stark sane was the haze of the shore far off on the horizon. _Only on one horizon, though,_ she reminded herself, glancing out in the other direction and shuddering at the sight of the grey-green sea meeting the leaden sky.

"We will land in a few days at most," Littlefinger assured her, but this did not make Sansa feel better. _Land where? Where are we going, where are you taking me?_

She never got to find out the answer to that question. Winter was coming, after all, and autumn storms at sea were nothing to laugh at - the final storm that Sansa experienced aboard the Merlin King was more than proof of this. The leaden sky turned black, the winds howled, the waves crashed and they were blown off course, out to sea. Though she had spent most of the journey shut up in her dank little cabin, Sansa suddenly had an overwhelming desire to experience the tempest that roared around her. _Am I dreaming again?_she wondered as she climbed to the deck and walked to the rail. All around her the sailors were yelling, icy rain pelted her, she heard a crack as one of the masts broke from the storm's fury...yet she felt strangely at peace as she gripped the side of the boat and felt the deck heave under her. She thought she must be dreaming because she did not feel wet or cold or frightened.

Not even when the sea reached for her, wrapping her in its cold clamminess, pulling her into its depths.

The last thing Sansa Stark saw was a face flashing before her eyes, the face of the ghoulish woman who now held her in icy and unforgiving arms. Half bald, the rest of her hair dry and the white of weirwood bark, face covered in deep unhealed scratches. Not until the the woman spoke did Sansa fear.

"Daughter," the hideous woman choked. "Come to me..."

**SANDOR**

Much as he hated to admit it, the little wolf-bitch had done all she could to prevent his wound from festering...but 'all she could' had not worked, and now he was weak and feverish and unable to sit his horse any longer. He insisted on stopping though he knew they shouldn't do so, and though he claimed to want wine and complained about the muddy water Arya Stark brought to him in reality he was thankful for the feel of it on his dry, cracked lips. He dozed then, a fitful rest, biting back groans and screams as he dreamed of flames consuming him bit by bit.

Was it the glint of the little sword in the sun, or the hiss of it being pulled from its sheath that woke him? Sandor would never know. He did know that the she-wolf was thinking of killing him, and though something in him refused to beg for mercy...well, seven hells, he _wanted_ it.

She knew where the heart was, after all.

"Do it," Sandor urged. When Arya still hesitated, he felt the need to remind her why she hated him so. He spoke of the butcher's boy, spoke of her pretty little chirping bird of a sister. _Little bird_, he thought desperately, and even as he was telling Arya that he should have raped Sansa Stark bloody he was feeling a strange constricting sort of pain in his chest over the knowledge that he'd fled King's Landing like the craven he was and left the little bird to be married off to that foul, lecherous Imp.

"You don't deserve mercy," Arya Stark spat, and then she left him there to die a painful drawn-out death.

She was right, of course. Sandor let himself succumb to the heat of the fever, the tongues of its flames embracing him. _I will not fear this_, he told himself. _I will not fear death. Only fire. Only fire._

Only fire.

**SANSA**

They say she's burning up, but all that Sansa Stark feels is ice crackling in her veins.

She remembers nothing from after the wild sea took her in its grasp. When she first woke they asked her if she knew who she was, where she was, _when_she was. "I am no one," she had croaked, her throat burning with the effort. "I belong nowhere and do not care where I am now." But the last she answered as truthfully as she could. "Is it still the second month of the new century?"

The holy man who was tending to her nodded, smiled. "That it is, m'lady. Now here is some dreamwine. Drink this, and rest."

And she did. At times her sleep was heavy; at times she would wake at the slightest sound. _At least I do not dream_, she thought, though she did keep picturing the face of the ghoul who had called her _daughter_.

Sansa was still in this state of icy fever when one day she vaguely heard the sound of the door crashing open. Some people shuffled in and she craned her ears, willing herself not to lose consciousness just now, wanting to know what was happening.

"Do you know who this _is_, Brother?" a man's voice said. He sounded both fearful and concerned.

"I do," replied the voice of the man who had been caring for her. "He is a man in torment, and just now he is injured and likely dying. Will that be all?"

A moment of silence, then, "You should not keep them in this same room."

"Just now I do not have a choice, as I must needs care for them both. The girl will be well first, and as soon as she is we will move her. This one...he may never get well. But I will care for him best I can."

The other man left without speaking, and Sansa drifted off again.

**SANDOR**

"Look at the helm, brother. You know who this is."

_The voices must be part of a dream,_just another fever dream as Sandor lay there dying.

"Yes, I know...yet I cannot in all good conscience leave him here to suffer."

_It is now or never._"Mmm..." Sandor moaned, unable to force his mouth to form the full word. The glare of the sun through his eyelids was suddenly blocked, and he felt the weight of a hand rest on his shoulder.

"Did you say something, ser?" the man asked. It was the voice of the second man, the one who did not want to leave Sandor to die.

"Not...ser...muh...mercy," Sandor finally forced out. _Kill me, you buggering fool, I cannot stand this fire any longer..._

The man's response was kindly. "I will not offer you the mercy you request," he said, "but I will offer you water and a place to recover, if you can recover at all. I will ask for something in return, though, not the least of which will be an end to the persona of the Hound. Does this sound agreeable to you?"

_Not really_, Sandor thought, but at the same time he felt himself nod.

The men hefted him onto the back of a horse and then the pain and the fever took over again. When they finally stopped the man who had offered to save him asked for a brother strong enough to help him bring their patient to a bed. The next thing Sandor knew, he was being laid out on a pallet that smelled of straw and again his fate was being discussed. It wasn't until the kindly man, the man who wanted to save him, mentioned a girl that Sandor truly tried to understand what they were saying. _A girl? What girl?_ Who were these men? Could they have found Arya Stark as well? _When I wake up I swear to the seven I'll clout her on the head for leaving me like she did..._

But then someone tipped a cup to his lips and he tasted dreamwine and sleep stole him away again.

**SANSA**

The air smelled of fire, of smoke, of ash.

Sansa tried to sit up but she was weak. Curtains had been drawn about her corner of the room - to keep her from having to look upon the man they had brought in, she knew. She had been allowed to sit up some these past few days, and had learned - from the few here that spoke - where she was and how long she'd been there. The Quiet Isle, a refuge for those sworn to the Seven, and she had been convalescing there for at least a fortnight now.

"Brother?" she called, her voice weak, quavering. There was no answer save the labored breathing of the man who lay suffering, perhaps dying, just on the other side of the room. Though the Elder Brother had admitted that they had brought the man in less than a sennight after her own arrival, he was apparently in much more dire straits. She wondered who he was, where he'd come from, what had happened to him...

The sounds of people bursting into action broke Sansa's reverie. Though there were few shouts, the palpable tension in the air combined with the smell of something burning set her on edge. She pushed herself up, gritting her teeth against the stars that popped in front of her eyes due to her sudden movement. When they were gone and she was sure she would not faint, she moved slower, swinging one leg at a time off her bed and settling her feet on the floor for several moments before pushing herself to stand. Then the stars were there again and she swayed on her feet, but she grabbed hold of the wall and steadied herself, again waiting until the feeling subsided. _You can do this, you are a Stark of Winterfell, you are_ strong.

The Elder Brother had told her that she had washed up on their beaches along with the driftwood and the bloated bodies of peasants and soldiers killed by the war. The last part had made Sansa shudder, and with a kind smile the Elder Brother had apologized for his uncouth words. _He knows you are highborn_, she worried, but thankfully he had yet to ask her name.

Still, they treated her almost _too_ gently. Like the porcelain she used to be, not the steel that she'd become. And she was beginning to tire of it.

Sansa pushed the curtains surrounding her bed aside and made for the single window in the little room, throwing open the shutters and gasping at what she saw.

The seaside village across the expanse of water where the Trident met the ocean was burning. Though she could see nothing but the smoke and brief flickers of flame, when she craned her ears the near silence of the Isle allowed her to hear what must be distant screams. _What is happening? Will they come _here_?_ She imagined that if she hadn't already been so pale from her illness, she would have gone white with fear.

Just then she heard a rasping sort of groan from the man in the other bed. Sansa turned, her eyes re-adjusting to the dim room, the beam of light from the window falling across the large body laid out under a pile of roughspun woolen blankets.

_No,_ she found herself thinking, hope and disbelief mixing her insides, all of them, all of _her_, into a confused sort of sludge. But even as she thought this, felt this, she took one step forward, then another, her heart fluttering in her chest, fluttering because it could not pound, she was still too weak, too sickly...

_Not as ill as he is_, Sansa realized, and a new sort of fear gripped her as she sat beside the Hound on his pallet and reached to touch his face. She knew that the Elder Brother could come back any moment, knew that whoever was attacking that village could come here and destroy the Isle as well, but just now she had to reassure herself that this was real, that _he_ was real, that he was _there_. Her fingertips brushed across his scars, feeling their rough edges, glorying in what had once frightened her so. _He has to live_. Tears welled in her eyes; she did not know what she could do or should do or whether any of it would help, regardless.

And so it was that Sansa Stark, weak from her own trials but recovering nonetheless, lifted the blankets covering Sandor Clegane and slid beneath them, wrapped herself around his body, pressed her cheek to his chest and let the heat of his fever lull her back to sleep.

**SANDOR**

He'd been on fire for so long that when he felt something cool against his skin he nearly whimpered with relief. Strange, though, that through the soft feminine scent that assaulted his senses there still lingered the stench of fire and smoke...

Sandor had no knowledge of how long he'd been...wherever he was. At times the man who had saved him coaxed him to eat; more often it was just a cup of water or dreamwine that was pressed to Sandor's lips. Sometimes there were voices - usually the man who was caring for him, though he had heard another voice recently as well. Soft and vaguely familiar, it had to be the girl that they had spoken of the day he'd been brought to this place...but Sandor could not imagine the little wolf-bitch putting up with being cooped in this room for so long.

_Mayhaps you are imagining it._ This was a strong possibility, he knew, for the fever had brought him far stranger visions and dreams – one in which _The Rains of Castemere_ clanging in his head as he rode hard from an unseen foe, both Arya and Sansa Stark tucked in front of him on Stranger's back...in another he was climbing the steps of a tower in the Red Keep with a birdcage in hand, reaching the top and setting the colorful, twittering little thing free only to see a lion reach out from its perch on a ledge and swipe the bird from the air...and most recently, a ruined castle blanketed in snow and a girl with fiery auburn hair facing down a giant of a knight whose face was hidden beneath a full helm...

But just now, Sandor felt that his fever was being extinguished. He shifted under the cool weight that seemed to be sucking the heat from his body and realized that it was another _person _in the bed with him.

_What in Westeros?_

He forced his eyes open. The lighting in the room was gray, gloomy; the fact that someone had thrown open the shutters didn't seem to do any good. Sandor breathed deeply at first but found himself choking on the reek of ash. Whatever was burning was far enough away to be of little worry, that much he knew, he who had spent most of his life avoiding fire, so he blinked his eyes and gathered his strength, propping himself up on his right elbow. This movement displaced the girl who was lying half on top of him - he knew it was a girl now, he was awake enough to recognize the feel of a woman's soft curves against him, though previously that feeling had only ever been something bought and paid for - and when he looked down at her she was rubbing at her face as if to wake herself up and though Sandor knew who she was he thought _I must still be dreaming _- until she looked up at him, her Tully blue eyes shining with hope, and whispered, "You're awake."

**SANSA**

She could not have slept long, for when the Hound moved underneath her, waking her quite suddenly, there was still light coming through the open window. When her eyes met his shocked and confused gaze, Sansa could not help but feel a surge of happy relief that he was awake as well - though as soon as she said the words she felt her face flush crimson at the realization that she had climbed into _bed _with him.

"Oh," she murmured in surprise, withdrawing from him and standing so quickly that she nearly fainted. She had to lean forward again, catching herself on the edge of his pallet and taking several long breaths before raising her eyes to his. They stared at each other in silence for several moments until she said, somewhat stupidly, "Someone is burning the nearby village."

The Hound's brow - or rather, the unscarred side of it - furrowed. "Always with the stupid chirps," he said, his voice a more gravelly rasp than usual. "Little bird," he added as an afterthought.

"I...what do you mean?" she asked, frowning. _Why is he being so unpleasant?_ Sansa caught herself thinking, but then she reminded herself that he'd always been unpleasant when she'd known him in King's Landing.

"You said someone is burning a village, girl, but you know I've been laying here unconscious, fighting off a fever. What makes you think I know - or care - where we are?"

Sansa bit her lip to keep from lashing out at him. _You are a lady, and a lady always remembers her courtesies._"The burning village is Saltpans," she explained. "We are on the Quiet Isle, a refuge for those who have sworn themselves to the Seven. The brothers rescued both of us."

The Hound's eyes flashed with something that seemed to be both anger and regret at the same time. "Good for you, but I didn't want to be bloody rescued."

She cocked her head. The Hound was not afraid of death, of that much Sansa was certain - but not being afraid of it and _wanting _it were two very different things. "All the same, I'm glad they did rescue you," she admitted.

"Why? Do you think I can help you somehow? I tried to do that before, back in King's Landing, but you never did seem to take my advice. Though I did hear that you were wed to the Imp, that the two of you poisoned Joffrey together but then you fled and left Tyrion Lannister to bear the accusation, so perhaps you did heed some of my counsel."

All thoughts of ladylike courtesy fled her then, and Sansa hit him across his hideously scarred face with the flat of her palm. She knew she could not hurt him, especially not now when she was still so weak, but _gods_, he angered her so. "Do not speak to me of Lannisters," she snapped, though she immediately regretted both her actions and her words as the Hound seized her wrist in his hand, his gray eyes as cold and frightening as a blade of steel.

"What do you expect of me, little bird?" he growled, and though she knew he must be weak from his own illness his grip was still like an iron cuff on her arm.

"Ex...expect?" Sansa was confused. When had she ever asked him for anything? "Beg pardon, _ser_, but the last time I saw you you held a knife to my throat, forced me to sing for you, kissed me...and then left me in King's Landing along with your kingsguard cloak and any honor you might have had." There were tears in her eyes now but she didn't care; for a moment she'd thought that maybe they could be in this together, whatever 'this' was - but the Hound had dashed that hope with his angry eyes and rude words. _Though why you expected anything more or less from _him_ of all people..._

He released her wrist as if she'd burned him and for a moment Sansa worried that he may hit her back, but instead she realized that he seemed..._amused_.

"I suppose I owe you an apology for holding that dagger to your throat, little bird," he shrugged, "but I'll tell you true, I did not kiss you that night."

**SANDOR**

He wondered if her brain had been addled by whatever ailed her, because Sansa Stark seemed quite sure that he had kissed her the night he fled King's Landing. _You were drunk, dog, and maybe you did, _he reminded himself. But Sandor remembered forcing her to sing for him; remembered her high, thin, frightened voice; remembered that he'd thought about kissing her, wanted to kiss her...but he'd known she didn't feel the same, and he hadn't been able to force it on her.

"But I...you..." The little bird's face went red with embarrassment, and though every bit of him ached from the exertion of nearly sitting up, of talking, Sandor could not help but chuckle.

"If I'd known you'd wanted it so badly you'd dream it up, believe me I would have kissed you that night."

"That's not...I mean to say..."

_How can a girl look so pretty even like this? Seven hells, I could watch her stammer and stutter all day. _Instead Sandor snorted and lowered himself back onto his pallet, hoping the little bird wouldn't notice that he was already exhausted from the effort it had taken to raise himself up on his elbow and speak for so short a time. For a long moment he could still sense Sansa Stark's shadow looming over his bed, but eventually she crept away and he lay there wondering what would happen now, what good could come of any of this.

It was very very late when a brother finally came to see them. Sandor immediately sat up again - and immediately regretted doing so, though he refused to lay back down. The little bird came out from her curtained cage and was the one to speak up and ask the brother what was happening, at which point the man rested a heavy gaze on Sandor and said, "I see that you are recovering, finally."

"Something like that," Sandor rasped. He studied this brother of the faith - a tall man, sure of himself, with a large square head and shrewd eyes. _Has he been caring for us? He doesn't look like a man meant to heal - he looks like a man meant for battle._

The brother sighed and looked back toward Sansa. "We will need to move you, now. We cannot have an unwed man and woman in the same room like this."

The little bird chewed on her lip for a moment and stole a glance at Sandor. "Brother...we...we know each other."

The brother met her eyes, then looked to Sandor. "Do you?"

Part of Sandor wanted to lie; another part somehow _couldn't_. Instead he averted his gaze and the brother said, curtly, "I see. Well, unless you spoke your vows before the Seven, one of you must be moved. That is the way of things on the Quiet Isle, m'lady."

Nothing could have prepared Sandor for the words that Sansa Stark spoke next. Or rather, the words that she _blurted_. "He gave me a cloak of protection."

Again the brother turned his eyes on Sandor. "But he said no vows?"

Silence stretched between the three of them. Sandor knew what the truth was; he was good at speaking the truth. But the little bird obviously wanted him to tell another story...and somehow he felt that the brother did not care either way at the moment. And he had given her his cloak; twice in fact. Though only once had it truly been for protection, the day Boros Blount ripped her gown open in front of half the court. The other time...the night of the Blackwater...he had ripped it off and left it in her room because he no longer had any use for it. _And so that she would remember that you were there. You wanted her to remember. Even if what she remembered was a dagger at her throat and a song taken by force, you would be in her head nonetheless._

Yet somehow she had remembered more than that, remembered things that hadn't even happened.

Remembered a _kiss_ that hadn't even happened.

"Not as such," Sandor grunted.

**SANSA**

Had he really not kissed her? The memory of his cruel lips pressed hard to hers had seemed so vivid for so long, yet now that he had claimed that hadn't been the case those memories seemed less than nothing.

As if they hadn't happened at all, in fact.

Yet somehow the idea of him being somewhere else - even if it was still on the Quiet Isle, it would not be the same if he was not there _with_ her - caused her to exclaim that foolishness about a cloak of protection. It wasn't a lie but it wasn't exactly true, and her surprise was nearly palpable when the Hound didn't outright deny having said vows to her. The Hound who _never _took vows.

The Elder Brother was not so easily dissuaded. "'Not as such'?" he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest.

_Think quickly_, she told herself. _You are not stupid as Joffrey claimed_. "I am a Northerner," she admitted, though she knew this more than anything could and likely would give her away. "I keep the old gods. There...there was a godswood..." _Lies, and you are a terrible liar, the Hound always said so._

"Witnesses?" the man pressed, and for a moment Sansa was speechless - but the Hound saved her, though he had no reason to do so.

"Witnesses?" he scoffed. "Look at her, and look at me. Do you think there were witnesses? Do you think anyone cares for me, or that anyone who cared for this girl would _allow_ her to wed me?"

Sansa could not help but notice that the Hound still wasn't outright lying, though she had already done so. The Elder Brother turned his shrewd eyes on each of them in turn before speaking. "I suppose you are both still in need of my care. I will not remove either of you, but you must keep to your own space. Truth be told there are worse things on our minds at the moment. Saltpans has been sacked."

"You don't say?" was the Hound's sarcastic response. The gaze that the Elder Brother leveled on him just then was cool; no, cold, and Sansa was glad he was not looking at her that way.

"This is not a thing to jape about," was the Brother's harsh response. "All but the castle was burned, and that only survived because it is stone. Men were brutally murdered, women and children raped, tortured; and the worst of the perpetrators was wearing the helm of a snarling dog."

The Hound was here, here with her, and Sansa could not understand what the Elder Brother meant. She opened her mouth to speak, but the holy man held up his hand and gave her a sad smile. "The helm is mine own fault. I left it where I found this man, as a grave marker that would tell all that the Hound was dead. A crazed fool picked it up and used it as a prop during these crimes; now the realm will hear of the rape of Saltpans and how the Hound - Sandor Clegane" - here he looked pointedly at the Hound - "was the man who tore off women's breasts and ate them."

Sansa felt something rise in her throat, though she had not eaten all day, and suddenly the Elder Brother was realizing his mistake and apologizing to her as he had when he'd explained how they found her amongst the driftwood and the bodies of the dead. She felt the Hound's eyes on her but would not, could not look at him. Finally the Elder Brother said, "To bed, child. I must needs care for those more seriously injured than you. We will speak of this situation more on the morrow." Sansa nodded and obediently returned to her curtained space, but as soon as she heard the brother leave she pushed her way out again and was not surprised to find that the Hound was still awake, sitting up, leaning against the wall now and likely angrier than she'd ever seen him.

"What will you do?" she asked, though she immediately knew that it was the wrong question and re-worded it. "What will _we _do?"

**SANDOR**

How in the Seven Hells had he just let this girl fabricate a tale of them wedding in a godswood, and what was the point of it anyway? So that they could continue to convalesce in the same room? And now this business with that damned dog helm...

_You're stuck here indefinitely, dog. People can't help but recognize your face._

The whole situation made him angry, and he was even angrier about the fact that he was stuck sitting here on a pallet brooding about it while the little bird stood by and asked him what _they _were going to do.

"I have no buggering idea," Sandor swore. "Didn't you hear the man? I've got problems of my own here, and you're the one that had to go prattling about a cloak of protection and a wedding in a godswood? By the by, you are as bad a liar now as you ever were, girl."

Sansa Stark gave him a look that may have been a glare, but Sandor thought the flush that built in her cheeks was likely born of embarrassment rather than anger. "The Elder Brother seemed to believe what I said," she reminded him.

Sandor scoffed at her. "He didn't _believe_ you, little bird. He's just a bit too busy to argue with you at the moment. Mark my words, when he's done dealing with whoever drags themselves over here from Saltpans, he'll come back and move one of us. As he should."

"Why?" the little bird chirped, taking a few steps forward and gingerly seating herself on the edge of his pallet. "Why should he?"

"You heard what he said," Sandor grunted. "I'll be a hunted man now, and you -"

He stopped suddenly. She...what? Last he knew she'd been married off to Tyrion Lannister and word was she'd helped him poison Joffrey and then run off, leaving the Imp to pay for their crime by himself. Sandor cared nothing for Joffrey and he despised that wretched dwarf, but he found that he very much wanted to know whether she'd truly had a part in the murder - and how she'd escaped, how she'd ended up here.

"It may happen that I'll be willing to keep my mouth shut about this little farce of yours," he said thoughtfully. "But before I decide for good and all, you're going to tell me how you came to be here. Tell me what happened in King's Landing after I left. Tell it all, and tell it true, girl. _I'll know if you're lying_."

The little bird clenched her hands together and stared at them for several long moments, and Sandor was left wondering whether she would do as he asked - but in the end she was as obedient as ever and she finally spoke. "All of it?" she whispered, and he understood that there was some she would hold back, if he allowed.

But no. "All of it," he insisted.

"I tried to be careful," she began. "But it wasn't enough. The Tyrells arrived, and Margaery. She was...kind. She and the Queen of Thorns wanted to marry me to her brother Willas Tyrell, the heir of Highgarden -"

"The cripple?" Sandor chuckled. "Gods, girl, everyone wants to pass you off on the saddest member of their family." He immediately regretted this attempt to tease her when she went quiet again and a blush rose on her cheeks. _That was not teasing, it was just plain mean, you're always just plain mean. _He expected Sansa to remain silent and thought he may even let her do so, but then she took a deep breath and continued.

"I thought it might be nice to go to Highgarden. Even if Willas was a cripple, he would not be so awful to me as Joffrey was, I was sure of it. His family were all so good to me. It was only when Ser Dontos explained that they were merely after my claim that I realized the truth of the matter. But still...it wouldn't have been so bad, I think." The little bird was quiet again and Sandor let her muse, all the while thinking to himself _Ser Dontos the fool, not so foolish after all._

Eventually Sansa sighed and said, "And then one day Queen Cersei came to my chambers with a new gown...and a maiden's cloak. I was given a choice of Tyrion or Lancel. They would have dragged me to the sept kicking and screaming if they had to, and Tyrion...he was kind to me, before, whereas Lancel was...not. I was wed that day, but..."

Again, silence. Sandor could feel the anger pumping in his chest like a living thing. Then the little bird merely repeated, "I was wed that day."

**SANSA**

She knew that he expected more from her, that she must tell him how she came to be at the Quiet Isle, but suddenly it was like she was reliving the night of her wedding to Tyrion all over again and remembering how she'd looked at her new husband and thought _he is so ugly...he is even uglier than the Hound_. Yet looking at the Hound now...his scars were fearsome, that was true, and without them he still wouldn't be a _handsome _man...but he had the heavy features of the First Men, and gray eyes not so different from her father's and Arya's and Jon Snow's...

_And he is strong. Look at him. No man could best him in a fight. He could protect me, as he once promised..._

The Hound cleared his throat. "You already said that," he rasped, and she met his eyes for a moment, confused. "You were married, girl, and then what?" he pressed.

_Oh._ "Then...my brother...my...my mother..." She could feel her lower lip trembling and she bit down on it, hard. _You are a Stark, a wolf, and wolves don't cry._

Sansa screwed up her face. _I sound so much like Arya right now._ She didn't want to think about Arya any more than she wanted to think about her lady mother or her brother Robb.

"I had no part in poisoning Joffrey." She chose not to think about the silver hair net just then; if there had been murder in those amethysts she'd not known, anyway. _Not until it was too late._ "Ser Dontos...he had been meeting me in the godswood, and he told me to be there that night. I fled when Joffrey started choking...I met Ser Dontos and...and he delivered me to a ship. To Littlefinger. They...they killed him. Dontos. We set sail but were beset by autumn storms and I...I suppose the ship sank, or perhaps I was just pulled overboard, because next I knew I woke up here and the Elder Brother told me they'd found me on the beach with the...the driftwood. I can't have been here but a few days when they brought you to the Isle."

"You've known it was me?" he asked, an edge to his voice.

"No!" Sansa cried, then realized how loudly she had exclaimed the word and said, more quietly, "No. Not until today. I...I smelled the smoke from Saltpans and got up to look out the window and then...then I saw you." _Please don't ask why I laid down with you, please, please..._The Hound studied her for several long moments; thankfully when he spoke it was not the question she feared, though she didn't know how to answer this one either.

"Why did you lie to the Elder Brother?"

"I...I'm not quite sure," Sansa admitted. Had she simply grown used to spitting out convenient lies? Is that what King's Landing had taught her? "My brother is a traitor, Your Grace...I was praying for the king in the godswood...I love His Grace with all of my heart." Even the good lies - _if you take a man's life on your name day, you are cursed _came to mind - had turned out to be troublesome for her in the end. Ser Dontos truly had been a fool...yet Sansa knew she was better off having fallen for his tricks as he fell for Littlefinger's, then to still be in King's Landing. _Or dead. My head on a spike._

He can keep you alive. You know it. _Tell_ him that you know it.

"It wasn't all a lie, anyway," she heard herself say. The Hound raised an eyebrow and looked as if he may say something, but Sansa blundered on, afraid that if she stopped talking for too long she would not say what she needed to say. "You gave me a cloak to protect me from everyone's stares when Ser Boros ripped my dress. And you told me that you could keep me safe, the night of the Blackwater. I know that I refused you, but you said it, you did, and then you left your Kingsguard cloak with me..."

"So it was part exaggeration and part lie. And badly told, at that."

The mocking little smile on the Hound's lips made Sansa angry. "If you would like me to confess, to retract it, say as much," she snapped. The smile vanished and his gray eyes grew hard again; Sansa fully expected him to insist that she follow through with her offer, yet she did not know what to say to keep this from happening. _He never kissed me, but he wanted to,_ she found herself thinking, and then, because it was the only thing that had come to mind, she turned to face the Hound and leaned in to press her lips to his.

**SANDOR**

He didn't know what he'd been expecting when he teased the little bird so mercilessly about her lie, but it hadn't been her anger and it hadn't been _this_, Sandor knew as Sansa Stark's face moved toward his.

When she kissed him it was a gentle brush of her lips on his at first, the kiss of a young girl who didn't quite know what she was doing. Sandor tried to fight the urge to make it more than it was - and lost. Almost before he knew what he was doing he had reached up and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her into him so that she lost her balance and landed nearly in his lap. Sandor hadn't kissed many women in his time - his scars scared all but whores away, and as the whores said, "You're not paying me to kiss you. Leastwise not there."

But he figured he knew enough, and as he held her head against his and realized that she wasn't going to pull away he gently ran the tip of his tongue between her lips, parting them _just enough_, just enough to show her what should come next. Tentatively, her mouth moved against his - for a moment, then two, then three, before she slowly pulled away with a sigh that both broke him and mended him all at once. He heard himself say, "Little bird" - a sort of moan, really; something that he hadn't meant to vocalize. When he opened his eyes her face was still quite close to his, her innocent blue eyes wide, staring.

"Was that what you thought you remembered?" he asked surprised at his own tender kindness.

"No," she murmured. "Different. _Better._"

Sandor smiled then, though he knew that doing so would only twist and accentuate his grotesque features.

**SANSA**

She had not expected him to kiss her like _that_, with all of the passion she'd imagined but all of the softness she'd never known he possessed. True, his lips felt...wrong. Normal, smooth on one side; unusual, rough on the other. Sansa had to draw back - the barrage of feelings that she experienced nearly overwhelmed her - and she was surprised to find that she did not _want_ to pull away.

_No one else will ever kiss me like this_. She knew it as she'd known the bond between herself and Lady, as she'd known that the Imp (deformed as he was) was a better option than taking Lancel as her husband, as she'd known that the face she'd seen in the ocean had been that of her deceased lady mother. She wanted to ask him, "What now?" but at the same time she knew that she both shouldn't and didn't have to do so. Instead she cupped her hand over his cheek, much the same as she'd done the night of the Battle of the Blackwater, and said, "Please don't leave me." She looked into his eyes, and there was no darkness or wildfire to hide them as there had been all those times before. She saw the struggle in them, the anger buried deep within, the confusion and the desire and so many other things that she didn't think she'd ever understand, and yet she _trusted_ him.

"As you wish, my lady."

It was the first time he'd called her anything other than "little bird" or "girl". It was not her name,…but it was enough.


End file.
